Monday, January 16, 2006

Todd Zywicki explains that Senator Kennedy has apparently attacked Judge Alito with guilt by association based upon an article which was satire:

"I have not seen any reports on whether the author (supposedly one H.W. Crocker III) intended the article as a farce. But given the over-the-top nature of the language quoted during the hearings and the larger context of the article, it at least raises some question about whether this was intended as a satire. In addition, the goofy pictures and the one-page 'back of the book' nature of the article (rather than a serious in-depth article) seems to add further credence to the suggestion that this was intended as a satire. The article seems to be intended as a tongue-in-cheeck defense of the Princeton eating clubs that were under attack by litigation by Sally Frank at this time."

Jake Tapper reports that Dinesh D'Souza who was editor of the magazine with the article in question also says the article was satire:

"Probing the debate over Alito's having said he was a member of the conservative Concerned Alumni of Princeton on a 1985 job application with the Reagan Justice Department, I spoke to conservative intellectual Dinesh D'Souza of the Hoover Institution yesterday.

D'Souza worked for CAP from 1983 to 1985, editing CAP's controversial Prospect magazine. He said a number of the Democratic attacks on Samuel Alito were based on falsehoods.

First off, D'Souza says, one of the two stories from Prospect that Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-MA, read this week at the confirmation hearings was intended as a satire.

The 1983 essay 'In Defense of Elitism' by Harry Crocker III included this line, read dramatically by Kennedy: 'People nowadays just don't seem to know their place. Everywhere one turns blacks and hispanics are demanding jobs simply because they're black and hispanic...'

The essay may not have been funny, D'Souza acknowledges, but Kennedy read from it as if it had been serious instead of an attempt at humor.

'I think left-wing groups have been feeding Senator Kennedy snippets and he has been mindlessly reciting them,' D'Souza said. 'It was a satire.'"